Courrèges S/S 2025 Paris

[Alquimista]

To illustrate this stupidity:

Every single iconic surrealist artist including Magritte and Dalí were incredibly influenced by Giorgio de Chirico and you can definitely see this influence. Imagine the 'art critics' destroying Magritte's work and telling everyone 'De Chirico did it before' just to try to take merit out of his creations. It's just risible.

It's a very reductive logic. Yes, there is similarities but to say "X did it first" takes away the singularity of spirit.

De Felice is far from Margiela aesthetically. He's much closer to Lang.

 

[tricotineacetat]

"Margiela did those silhouettes before" might be the most absurd comment on this thread so far. Cape silhouettes have been done even before Margiela and if people think mentioning Helmut Lang or Margiela comparing them to newer designers to dismiss them every single time makes them look 'clever', it just doesn't. It simply shows their complete lack of understanding of how creativity works. For the record, Di Felice's work looks NOTHING like Margiela's.

I blame namedropping the same 90s designers on the fact that now we have internet and we can keep better track of what has been done in the past 30 years, which wasn't the case before that. If people had had the same access to archive fashion in the 80's and 90's, Margiela and Lang would have gotten the same type of ridiculous comment you get on this forum dismissing his work.

Let's face it: People who namedrop Margiela and Lang when faced with newer designers are just allergic to contemporary fashion. Sure, these designers are incredibly influential, but it doesn't mean a newer designer cannot be influenced, yet go forward.

I think there is a fundamentally different gain from having to look at things first hand, like on a shop floor or in a costume collection of a museum, than when you source images online. You turn garments inside out, you touch the fabric, you feel the little parameters that you can only see when you look at a garment up close.

I consider myself lucky to have had my fashion upbringing at a time that was mostly analogue and you didn‘t have runway looks available in real time. It meant something to maybe even travel to another city so that I had the chance to see Alaia or Yamamoto up close. I tried to teach that to students in fashion courses but they either felt too intimidated or didn‘t see the necessity to do it when they had instead images from Tumblr or Instagram as a point of reference.

The result of that is clearly what the industry reflects. Clothes have to appeal from a screen and that makes fashion design a very flat affair, with worsening quality of construction and fabrics. I see that with my favourite mills having smaller and smaller businesses due to the fact both customers and designers can no longer feel the subtle differences that make the difference in an Italian, British or Japanese worsted wool.

My conclusion to that is that I would much rather wear clothes Jil Sander or Yohji Yamamoto designed in her 70ies that are by no means less contemporary to those designed by her much significantly younger peers today. There's a profoundness gained when you remain steadfast refining your thing for decades, often against the grain of the mainstream fashion conversation, than chasing for the new every season.

 

[LadyJunon]

"Margiela did those silhouettes before" might be the most absurd comment on this thread so far. Cape silhouettes have been done even before Margiela and if people think mentioning Helmut Lang or Margiela comparing them to newer designers to dismiss them every single time makes them look 'clever', it just doesn't. It simply shows their complete lack of understanding of how creativity works. For the record, Di Felice's work looks NOTHING like Margiela's.

I blame namedropping the same 90s designers on the fact that now we have internet and we can keep better track of what has been done in the past 30 years, which wasn't the case before that. If people had had the same access to archive fashion in the 80's and 90's, Margiela and Lang would have gotten the same type of ridiculous comment you get on this forum dismissing his work.

Let's face it: People who namedrop Margiela and Lang when faced with newer designers are just allergic to contemporary fashion. Sure, these designers are incredibly influential, but it doesn't mean a newer designer cannot be influenced, yet go forward.

Funny enough, Margiela and Lang were often compared to their predecessors too. Critics often found links to Balenciaga and Vionnet in Margiela's work, while parallels were found between Lang and the likes of YSL and Armani.

Di Felice may have pulled the cape silhouette from Margiela this season (though i'd argue the shape is closer to Balenciaga's cocoon coat), but this sort of sharp, graphic slickness isn't Margiela's language at all.

 

[tricotineacetat]

In terms of fashion history, it would also be false to deny the lineage from which designers like The Row, Phoebe Philo, Peter Do or Nicolas Di Felice developed their POV. They build up on the generation that came before them etc. but clearly some fashion movements had their origin somewhere - Such as deconstruction starting with the Japanese or the Belgians and Alaia or Galliano building on the foundations laid by Madeleine Vionnet.